Archive for Solar Eclipse

In week 30, I will be visiting China in order to witness the July 22 total solar eclipse (which is the longest of this century!).

My itinerary is as follows:

Flight to Shanghai:

Departure: Saturday July 18 @ 18.20 hrs. with flight KL 0895

Arrival: Sunday July 18 @ 10.55 hrs. (flying time approx. 10.35 hrs.)

As I understand from one of my colleagues at work, China is taking the swine flu (or Mexican flu) pandemic very seriously, and people will be scanned — on the forehead — with an infrared scanner in the plane, after it has landed (obviously) and before it is allowed to go to the gate. See the picture.

So I’m mentally preparing for an extra two hours on the ground before we can disembark.

Then it’s off to the Crowne Plaza Century Park Hotel, where I will stay for two nights. I’ll probably visit our company’s Shanghai local headquarters on Monday.

Then on Tuesday, I’m travelling onward to Wuhan’s Hangkou station by train (and a bullet train at that):

In Wuhan I’ve booked the Yushang Business Hotel, as my fellow eclipse enthusiasts will be staying there, as well.

My eclipse friends have booked an organised trip through the geology department of the University of Utrecht, which lasts three weeks. I didn’t book that trip because I will be going to Anticipation — the Montréal WorldCon — a week later, and I only have so many days off, and my budget only goes so far.

Anyway, reunion with friends on the Tuesday night, and then the next morning, on July 22, I hope to join the group when they set off, on 6 a.m., for a good location about 25 kilometres north of Wuhan. Climatologically speaking, this should be one of the best spots (with the lowest chance of cloud cover, which is still 61%, so it’s going to be ) to observe the total solar eclipse.

(NB: this is the one from last year in Novosibirsk.)

Here’s the interactive map of the July 22, 2009 solar eclipse (courtesy of NASA). The centre line of totality goes straight over the Wuhan Tianhe Airport, and the place where we will — probably, as I don’t know the exact location — be has the following data re. the total eclipse:

Lat.: 30.7837° N; Long.: 114.3165° E

Total Solar Eclipse; Duration of Totality: 5m29.1s Magnitude: 1.037

Event ———————- Time (UT) – Alt — Azi

Start/partial eclipse (C1) : 00:15:01 032.4° 084.3°

Start/total eclipse (C2) : — 01:24:02 047.2° 092.9°

Maximum eclipse : ——— 01:26:46 047.8° 093.3°

End/total eclipse (C3) : — 01:29:31 048.4° 093.7°

End/partial eclipse (C4) : – 02:46:17 064.6° 108.3°

Since this is all in UT (Universal Time, then — according to the Time Zone Converter — we need to add 8 hours for China time, so totality will start at 09.24.02 hrs local time, and end at 09.29.31 local time.

Of course, I could have taken a flight from Shanghai to Wuhan and back, but I hope to see a bit more of China in the train, and a five hour train trip is just about the right length. Another, although unplanned, advantage is that the Yushang Business Hotel in Wuhan is literally a stone’s throw away from the Hangkou railway station. This is a lucky coincidence (I would’ve booked the same hotel as where my eclips friends would be staying, irrespective of location in Wuhan).

Then, on Thursday late afternoon I’m back in Shanghai.

The Friday morning and afternoon are free for sightseeing: in the evening the plan is to have dinner and drinks (plenty of drinks) with a couple of Dutch expatriates, who know the good places in Shanghai.

Which then gives me the Sunday to recover as I am expected back on the day job on the Monday. Then one week of work, and onwards to Montréal (of which more in the next post). Last year, I had only two days between returning from Novosibirsk and travelling onwards to Denvention. Now, it’s ten days, so maybe I’ll be more coherent on the first day in Canada…;-).

UPDATE: Belated apologies to Franck Giral for not attributing the fantastic picture of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and Shanghai by night to him: at the time I got it from some of the (at least) 47 other websites that featured it, and couldn’t figure out the original.

prose poem: what the heck is that? Well, anything you think it is. Write what you believe fits the bill and let the editor sort it out. Don’t limit yourself and feel free to push the boundaries, like, e.g.:

--> Haiku –- written like this: Maybe a haiku/there in the twitterverse/would appear like this;

--> Prose rife with poetic elements both formal — such as rhyme, alliteration (which is easy to overdo!) and meter — and thematic such as syntax, tone and reference (images, symbols & metaphors);

--> Imbue it with a certain rhythm and a unique voice;

--> I’ll look at actual poetry, too (the boundary will be blurry, anyway);

optimistic: anything with an (eventual) positive attitude or upbeat tone;

near future: from next year up to about fifty years later;

SF: ditto as in prose poem: write what you believe fits the bill and let the editor sort it out;

One submission per person per week: I’ll be publishing one prose poem per week, and will be checking the submissions once a week. Don’t feel limited: this means you can submit up to 52 prose poems a year. I prefer people submitting their best rather than people submitting at will then hoping something will stick.

Submit by email to shineanthology@gmail.com , in the body of the email (and yes: anything longer than 140 characters will be rejected: this is, after all, for Twitter);

Payment: 5 dollars per prose poem, payable through PayPal (don’t have a PayPal account? Either get one, or don’t submit), on publication.

Accepted prose poems will be published once a week on Wednesday on Twitter, here: OUTSHINE!

Bio: a biography with author name will follow the published prose poem almost immediately. Bio must be shorter than 136 characters (as bio- will precede the actual biography). Hint: use a tinyurl to link to your website/blog/LJ or to your FaceBook/MySpace/Twitter account.

UPDATE 2: I have received a question about the rights @outshine is asking. Well, so far, none: I accepted tweets from submitters, published them on Twitter, and republished them on both the Shine and DayBreak Magazine websites. Otherwise, submitters are -- as far as I'm concerned -- free to republish their tweets (OK: 'prose poems') anywhere, anytime, and the rights revert to them rightaway. Why? Well, the moment someone likes a particular message on Twitter, it is 'retweeted' -- a tweet starting with 'RT @ XXX', where XXX is the source. It is *the* common practice on Twitter, and as a Twitterzine publisher I can either state that people are not allowed to retweet @outshine's prose poems -- which obviously won't work and is also counterproductive -- or just let Twitter be Twitter.

Therefore I never asked for rights, or sent out an actual contract. Sorry about that, but even as the highest paying Twitter market -- to the best of my knowledge, and do absolutely feel free to point me to a market that pays more than $5 a tweet: I'd be tempted to submit, myself -- I simply don't feel the need to put up a contract, define rights, and go through all the paperwork: even $5 a tweet isn't worth my time on that.

But after almost a year I did get the question, so here's my answer: I want *exclusive* Twitter rights for 6 weeks -- hey, gotta drive a hard bargain -- or the first retweet, whichever comes first (obviously, if you retweet your own submission, you've just liberated your own tweet, congratulations: it never happened before...;-). Otherwise, I want the *non-exclusive* rights to reprint your tweet at both the Shine website and the DayBreak Magazine website -- things I've been doing for over six months already, sorry about that, but I just assume you want your pieces to be read as widely as possible, and assuming the average word is 6 characters, then including spaces [which Twitter does], I'm paying about 25 cents a word, which is in line with the top paying online markets like Tor.com and Subterranean Press. Only difference is that I am open to unsollicited submissions...;-).

SHINE anthology guidelines

SHINE is an anthology of optimistic near-future SF, edited by Jetse de Vries, published by Solaris Books, and is planned for an early 2010 release.

Keywords:

Convincing and optimistic: Imagine that we are the biggest skeptics on the planet, then show us how things can change for the better, and persuade us.

Near-future: from now until 50 years later.

SF: we're not going to define it. Write what you think is SF, and convince us with the story.

The Gritty:

Length: up to 10k words (not hard, but anything longer than 10k should be mind-blowingly superb).

Payment: 5 cents a word, on publication (and probably a pro rata share of the anthologist's earnings: I'm working on that).

Genres: science fiction only. I greatly prefer original stories, but I will -- like Baen's Universe -- look at stories that have been published in markets that are not professional by SFWA standards, or markets with a relatively small reach. I also consider Interzone, Black Static, Postscripts, Futurismic, Apex Digest and Flurb to be either professional markets or markets with a wide reach (or both), so don't want to see stories published by them, either.

Rights: First World English Rights, non-exclusive world anthology rights, non-exclusive audio anthology rights, and further subsidiary rights specified in my boilerplate [author-anthologist contract], which I'll put up after I return from World Fantasy. NOTE: obviously, for eventual reprints the first world rights will become anthology rights, first if possible.

Reading Period: May, June and July 2009. (UPDATE: reading period extended until August 1)

Response Time: Most rejections will be sent out quickly, while I will hold over stories that I like until July 31, when a final decision is made. No multiple submissions, please: only one story per author, and only submit a second one if I expressly ask for it. Simultaneous submissions: at your own discretion, but keep in mind that I will not fight over a story, that is, if it's with another publisher I will drop it like a ton of bricks.

But if we are to have some some influence over how that change unfolds, isn’t it important that our stories, whether they be in the news, on television screens or in the pages of science fiction novels, fully explore the optimistic possibilities that technology represents?

For an anthology with a very tight remit — optimistic near-future science fiction — there is a huge variety in the stories themselves. It occurs to me that this book is the perfect introduction to SF for readers who wouldn’t normally venture into the genre.

Starting Friday October 16, 2009, DayBreak Magazine and DayBreak Magazine 2 have been launched (two faces of the same outlet): DayBreak Magazine will feature a positive, forward-looking story every second Friday until the print Shine anthology is released, or possibly even a bit beyond that date.

OUTSHINE is a picowebzine on Twitter that I set up for fun and as a way for both writers and readers to get a feel for what might be coming in the Shine anthology. OUTSHINE is open to submissions — that is prose poem tweets of 140 characters (incuding spaces), or less — until further notice. Feel free to submit!

Google Map of SHINE Story Locations

This is the SHINE anthology website,

which:1) Promotes the SHINE anthology;2) Functions as an open platform for optimistic SF;Feel Free to ask questions, discuss, or add suggestions in the comments.Or otherwise email the editor at [Jetse.deVries@gmail.com]SHINE,BABY,SHINE!YEAH…………